Rich Aschmann has created a very cool dialect map of the United States, with extensive audio samples included. Check it out.

Many thanks. Some of my formal education was in linguistics and this has always fascinated me. Even though the map doesn't show it, as a child and growing up in the city of Atlanta, I was able to distinguish very different dialects from my cousins who grew up in the country outside of Atlanta.

When my family was moving back to Georgia after having lived for a number of years in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland and finally Arizona, we crossed the Mississippi river and stopped for gas. Both my wife and I could barely understand the gas station attendant, and after we settled in North Georgia, I noticed for several months that everyone spoke strangely. After a while, they all learned to speak normally.

Fascinating. Now if only someone would create a map that would show where people call it pop, soda, or coke, aligned against sub, hoagie, grinder. There's probably graduate thesis work in that one.

Amazing. I note there is no segregation for Valley Girl speak, but for some reason it seems to transcend geographical boundaries; I mean, there are teenage girls here in British Columbia using it...

I grew up in the border area of SE Texas/SW La. It was a very interesting juxtaposition of contrasting accents and languages, including lowland South, Cajun English, Cajun French, and even Spanglish.

folk you've heard nothing like a northern minnesota finnish/swede.norwegian dialect ! puts the accent from the movie "Fargo" to shame- the cadence and sing song effect is tough even for a southern minnesotan to decipher- especially the local old timers ? ya nod your head and smile- geo must be familiar with this dialect

i recall sitting in a us army reception barracks and listening to all the different sounds- the consensus was "i don't sound funny ! you sound funny"- and yeah that's where i first heard the word "soda" and assorted other slang- damn i thought it was called "pop"

A pop/soda map exists. Allow me to rummage through Google....

Here we go:
http://popvssoda.com:2998/

Enjoy.